This is one of two singles that are here to trumpet the arrival of Drever’s long awaited solo album, Doing This For Love, review incoming, six years after his last release, confirming the more recent Best Of wasn’t a full stop on his muse. A set of songs that first began during lockdown, this example shows there is still a lot he has to offer, a lorra lorra lot.

Here, with Rachel Sermanni’s light vocal harmony and Cahalen Morrison’s banjo to augment Drever’s increasingly confident croon and deft guitar play. The sound is filled out by Euan Burton’s bass and Louis Abbott on everything else, drums included. A song about rescuing landlocked Whales from about his home coast of Orkney, it is about as warm and inviting as an Orcadian caffè corretto in a gale. (That’s a flask of hot coffee with a slug of Highland Park, by the way.)

The mix of lyrical imagery combines with the propulsive thrust of percussion, which imagines the waves as they beat on the beached mammals, allowing for a happy ending. Who said whaling tales were a spent force?

Liminal Sky are about to release their second single from the forthcoming album All Tomorrow’s Darkness. Destopian moods are familiar to much prog/post rock music and are prevalent in the single A Solitary Future.

Usually we dread this being thrust upon us but the band admit it“ explores the urge to escape your own mind, and the acceptance that some forms of solitude can’t be outrun…….. This song is about fading light, unshared memories, and moving forward alone”

This desolation is reflected in the tense vocals of Krystoffer Rygg (Ulver). The ringing, twangy guitars are slightly unnerving but tuneful.

Whilst there is a feeling of emptiness and isolation permeating the track it is all delivered with well crafted musicianship providing an attractive taster for the full album to be released in June

When is a single not a single and when is it an album is my preamble, the answer being when it is an EP. But this sparkling set of 5 is still a worthy candidate here. We met Diyet (van Lieshout, aka Diyet Glacier) at last year’s Mancs. Folk Fest, and jolly good she/they were too.

Here, in the same iteration of the group as was then showcased, there are 5 songs, stripped down and back into trio format. All originally on a full band album and with full backing, my feel is that the mood of the songs, and their stark imagery, suits better this more spartan production.

Of part First Nation origin and upbringing, these songs all evoke the harsh conditions of her home, far and high in the Yukons. Touching on the then practice of childhood culture washing, inflicted on indigenous children by the Canadian government, the resistant resilience that reverberated against that shines through in the songs.

The music is, loosely, Canadiana, that intrinsically more folksy style of country, with which Canadians are so adept. The Love Soldiers, for the purposes of this release, are Diyet’s husband, Robert, on guitar, drums and backing vocals, and Bob Hamilton on guitars and steel. Diyet sings and plays bass. Give Me A Reason is the lead and featured track.

A hypnotic song delivered with a hint of Kate Bush and a touch of Kik Dee’s ‘Amoureuse’

She bares her soul in this song of betrayal and along with her lyrical message is as crystal clear as her vocal. The simple structure of the song with snaring drums and short beats rhythm with some minimal acoustic guitar picking and keyboards adding more texture. How Are You? Will be included where you can enjoy more melancholic experiential tunes.. Less is definitely more in Ismena’s invitation into her life

The Sudan is a country touched and tarnished indelibly by turmoil, civil war there ongoing since 2023. Sulaf became a singer in exile; when she left, in 2022, it was supposed to be only temporarily. However, that stopover, in Paris, has become permanent, at least for now, throwing her into contact and collaboration with other refugees.

Fresh from a guest appearance on the latest release from venerable desert-rockers Tinariwen, her debut album is now coming together, with this the first evidence thereof. Laden with synths and with her resonant six-string out, it is a song of regret and hope filled yearning: “Honour us, in an age or unrest”, drawn from the Sufi poetry of her Grandfather.

With vocals that billow out, the whole is a hypnotic and serpentine hymn, fluid in tempo as it is in any one style, anchored by the hand percussion. A densely layered celebration against the odds, add her to the roster of emerging voices from this part of the world.